San, A Princess Monoke Drabble
by Grips
Summary: A request fulfilled as part of a drabble challenge, in which San and Moro first meet.


The forest reeked with the stench of something new. Something that didn't belong.

Moro lifted her muzzle and breathed deeply, separating the odour from the rest of the scents of her home. It brought back to her memories of the brown beetles. The parasites had infested her forest and killed many of the magnificent trees, some older than the wolf god herself, and had left ruin and devastation. Voices and memories thousands of years old had been silenced. The danger had passed decades ago, and where the old trees had fallen new ones were taking their places, but this new scent stirred the memories.

The great wolf rose, heavier than two bull elephants yet making as much noise as a moth, ears pricked forward. It took no effort to pick out the smell, now. It was pungent. She tested the air for the scent of boar, particularly Nago, the gigantic guardian of the forest. Nothing, and she was thankful for it. As valued as the protection of he and his tribe was, the boars were proud and violent. She remembered their attempts to kill the infesting beetles with their tusks and snouts, only to fell some of the very trees they were trying to save. No, this was best handled by a wolf. The smell told her the situation would require, somehow, patience.

She turned to face her den and growled low. Through the yellowed, mottled sunshine stabbing through the canopy stumbled her two pups, now old enough to walk, but barely. Their coats were the colour of freshly fallen snow, different from their mother's aged ivory. She gave them each the silent command to follow, then began to search for the source of the smell.

The undergrowth parted before the wolf god as she passed through the forest like an old whisper. Her pups that followed close behind were not yet so refined, and soon grew bored and snarled and bit at one another. She turned and bared her teeth to silence them.

The scent led her to the edge of a stream. Near it were the creatures giving it off, and she was once again reminded of parasites. She crouched low to avoid detection, and her pups, detecting the seriousness of the situation, did the same. Their mother studied the animals that walked upright in a way that made her fur stand on end and stirred a certain sense of wrongness in her.

She waited for some time, but no more of them came. It was just the pair of them, covered in flaps of baggy skin and walking in a way that seemed alien and altogether impossible. At first they appeared to have three arms, but Moro slowly discovered that they were using smoothed pieces of wood with sharpened rocks at the end to cut branches from the trees and set them on the mossy ground close to the water. She could hear the trees cry out in pain as they were hacked. Bundles of more wrinkled material lay at their feet. One creature was male, and one was female.

She decided then and there to bite their heads off. Slowly, she rose, and to the two humans it appeared as if the white wolf, impossibly large, had materialized magically out of the undergrowth just as the male had managed to set fire to the tree limbs in the odd circle. The smoke filled Moro with rage, and she bared her teeth and growled, intent on feeling their blood flow hot over her tongue.

One of the bundles stirred, and a thin, wailing cry rose from it. The female picked up the bundle, and the two fled, screaming in terror and anger words that the wolf god could not understand. She snarled and leapt after them. The male quickly outran the female and made no effort to aid her, showing no concern, not even a turn of his head. The woman stumbled, branches whipping at her face and cutting her skin as she fled in terror. In her panic, with nothing in her mind and soul but the desire to survive, she threw the screeching bundle at the feet of the wolf whose hot, wet breath she could feel on the back of her neck.

Perhaps Moro would have taken that very moment to finish her, but the curious yelping of her pups caused her to whirl around. The two humans fled into the forest, and she never saw them again.

One of her pups, in an eager imitation of his mother, was dragging the bundle across the forest floor with his teeth, wrenching backwards with tugs of his shoulder muscles, while the other looked on with wide eyes and twitching muzzle.

"No," Moro spoke in a growl. "Let me see."

The pup who had been dragging the material curled his lips and wrinkled his muzzle at his mother, but backed away and joined his brother's wide eyed wonder.

From the depths of the bundle a white arm appeared. Moro focused on it intently. The wailing sound stopped and changed to a gurgle, and she knew then that it was a pup, abandoned by its mother. Her anger faded, and she knew now why she had felt she would need patience. She took the material between her teeth and delicately pulled it away from the pup. The little one looked up at the massive wolf with no fear in her eyes, only curiosity. One clenched fist rose and hit the wolf god on the nose.

Moro knew she should eat the creature, whatever it was. Gain strength from it and rid the forest of an unwanted parasite, but something held her back. She picked the bundle up gently in her teeth and began to carry it as she had carried her pups before they could walk. The pup inside kicked and gurgled, and Moro knew then that she could never kill her.

Her pups followed silently as she headed back to the water's edge. She kicked dirt over the fire and let the stream claim the belongings of the strange creatures. She didn't know then that this was not the last she would see of humans, and that one day one would take her life.

She carried her daughter back to the den and set her in the pelt of her father, which lay close to the entrance of the cave. He had died just before the birth of his two sons, and Moro, not possessing the foolish taboos of mortal human beings, had eaten him in an act of love and mourning and had kept his skin to warm her pups. Moro's human daughter would grow and fashion it into clothing in later years.

"Will we eat her?" snarled the braver of the two pups, though he knew the answer was no, and no longer wanted to anyway. His mother bared her teeth in a wolf smile.

"No. We'll name her San."


End file.
